Vancouver Startup week 2017 came and went and now we’re well into the fall season. We had ourselves a phenomenal time sponsoring the Hackathon over the weekend, and hosting the open house “Patio Sessions at Two Tall Totems” at our totems HQ.
Hackathon
In case you missed it, the weekend hackathon featured a “mobility” themed competition, where groups of developers, designers, and business devs racked their brains during a 24 hour sprint to piece their idea together and bring it to life. Our two totems, Chris & Dave were part of the judging panel responsible for scoring the groups.
In total, there were 40 teams competing over two rounds of presentations. The first round consisted of two groups of 20 teams with 5 teams progressing to the next round from each group. The 10 winning teams then moved on to the second round and competed for a chance at first, second, and third prize.
Some notable ideas included a shared skateboard rental business on campus, installing facial recognition that sets off an alarm if the driver falls asleep at the wheel, a carpool optimizer that finds routes, and many other interesting ideas.
The winning team, AdCar, presented an idea on allowing companies to sponsor free rides in driverless cars with the trade off of the passenger(s) being voluntarily exposed to advertising from the sponsor. It’s an idea that has great potential for generating revenue, and albeit futuristic, might not be all that far away.
Patio Sessions at Two Tall Totems
We cooked up a storm on Tuesday. Literally, things got a little smoky (word of warning, apply caution when grilling grease filled sausages folks.) With over 100 attendees, and three great speaking sessions, we met some amazing individuals, had some meaningful conversations, and an awesome time.
Our President and Co-founder, Chris Hobbs, gave a presentation on the TTT journey, and how we made it past the startup death zone to get to where we are today. Our VP of Business Development, Jose Hernandez, shared with everyone how we take an idea and build it into something tangible with his session “From Concept to Product”. Last but not least, Felix Cheng, our UX/UI Designer gave a wonderful presentation on “UX for Mobile App Development”.
This was our third year in a row taking part in Vancouver Startup Week since its’ inception, and we’re glad to see the event continue to grow. It’s always a pleasure to witness all the wonderful things happening in the Vancouver’s tech community, and the progress that’s been made. The future couldn’t come soon enough.
More blogs by Pauline
